Happy Tuesday everyone , we hope you have been having a great day. We have been so busy in the Kindergarten today engaging in lots of activities both inside and outside and investigating our current interest of bugs and insects.
Today at group time we continued our discussion about bugs and insects talking about what we wanted to find out and what we already knew. We then introduced a video to the children about insects and bugs, where we learnt facts about ten different bugs and insects. After watching the video we encouraged the children to share some of the new found knowledge they had found through watching this video. This is what we found out…. Jaxon: The mosquitoes land on the water. Hamilton:Learnt about bees making honey with nectar. Astrid: The Butterflies were flying and flapping their wings. Memphis: The bees drink honey. Milan: Grasshoppers are littler than Crickets. Levii: Ants make holes with their mouth. Graysen: Spiders they make spider webs. Layla: Butterflies they flap and they fly with their wings. Wynter: Bees making honey with flowers. We then had a discussion about pollen and nectar and how the bees make their honey. During the rest of the week we will revisit watching this video for the children to revisit what they have learnt about the bugs and insects and possibly process some new information. The children also enjoyed singing our bug n roll song that we have been learning this week, it is great to hear that they have already picked up most of the words and are joining in with the songs and actions.
At group time this morning Hamilton shared with us what he and Hungry Jacks got up to during their weekend together. Hamilton did such a great job at reading and telling us hos story what they got up to together. It sounded like they had a great weekend together. I will be creating a book where each week we will add the story from Hungry Jacks adventures. Thank you for taking such great care of Hungry Jacks Hamilton. I wonder who will get to take him home this weekend?
As our new interest in bugs and insects is continuing to emerge, today the children continued to have the opportunity to explore our bug and insect discovery table. Here they had the opportunity to explore the encased bugs using the magnifying glasses. Which we encouraged the children to talk about what they could see. As the children engaged in this experience today we encouraged them to share their prior knowledge and think about questions or things they would like to find out about bugs and insects. The children had the opportunity to explore and engage with literacy as they read the fact sheets that were on the table, to further build on their knowledge. As our friend Hamilton explored the bugs and insects today he talked about having two bugs which were the leaf beetle and the blue leaf beetle, I asked him if he thought they looked the same or different. He commented that “No they are a little different, they aren’t the same colour. As we explored the bugs with the magnifying glasses we talked about how many legs the bugs had, which we worked out was six as we counted each of them and two antennae, we also talked about the different colours of the bugs and the different sizes incorporated some mathematical language as we compared whether they were bigger or smaller.
To continue on with some of the children’s interest in construction and play dough, today the children had the opportunity to explore and experiment with the two together as they engaged in the activity, What can you make and construct with the matchsticks and play dough? This experience was a great opportunity for the children to continue to use their problem solving skills and persist with difficulty as they tried different strategies as they tried to construct structures with the matchsticks. Levii commented that he was “making a fire and going to blow it up to pieces and then make it bigger”. Jaxon commented that he was” I’m going to make a birthday cake, oh my god it’s so squishy and hard and I have 100 candle sticks on my cake.” Harper decided that she wanted to make a snake and a snail. Milan “I’m making a snail and I’m going to make a plant for it to eat and also make a small snail”. It is great to see that the children are using a lot of language through their play at the moment as they use descriptive language, forming sentences, creating stories and incorporating numeracy concepts.
This morning the children also had the opportunity to explore the peg boars where they had the opportunity to create patterns or use their imagination and creativity through creating pictures.
During the morning we offered the children the opportunity to explore both the indoor and outdoor environment. On asking the children we discovered that all of the children wanted to play outside. Before we went out the children were such responsible learners as they helped tidy the classroom, pack away the activities that had been playing with and then making sure they were sun smart by putting on sunscreen and their sunhats. In the outdoor environment the children had so much fun riding on the bikes. At one stage lots of our friends wanted to use the same bike. We came up with a solution using a sand timer which the children would use to help see how long they had left on the bike or when it would be their turn. This was a great opportunity for the children to explore fairness, turn taking and also exploring the concept of time as they knew they had five minutes on the bike before it was the next persons turn. The children also had the opportunity to engage and explore their physical skills up in the outdoor classroom, where we revisited the skills we were learning with Miss Jenny on Friday. The children had the opportunity to practice jumping with two feet together, crawling around the cones, and side stepping. It is great to see the children are becoming more confident with these skills.
There was also some wonderful chid initiated play happening in both play spaces this morning. As usual the children enjoyed engaging in role play and imaginative play in the home corner dressing up in dress ups and cooking up a storm. Outside it was great to see the children initiating a game of duck duck goose together as well as running races and playing some of the games they play in Arakaan.
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